School District Squanderers
What to know: Houston ISD was recently discovered to have spent $1.3 million on consulting services, mostly related to passing bonds. A large part of the expense came as “HISD used Outreach Strategies to share information about a $4.4 billion school bond, which ultimately failed in November 2024.”
The TPPF take: Instead of spending tax dollars in the classroom, Houston ISD is wasting money on consultants.
“Property taxpayers expect their hard-earned money to help kids in the classroom, not to go into the pockets of the consultant class. It’s unconscionable that Houston ISD—and other school districts—would squander millions in pursuit of billions,” says TPPF’s James Quintero. “We need strict new laws ensuring that our tax dollars go to classroom instruction and little else.”
For more on education spending, click here.
Gas Prices
What to know: Gas prices are holding steady and could even trend lower in time for Thanksgiving travel, AAA Texas says.
The TPPF take: These prices are one of the benefits of the Trump administration’s energy policies.
“Had either the Biden or Harris tickets prevailed last November, those numbers could look quite different,” says TPPF’s Robert Henneke. “The Biden administration’s war on domestic energy, including the former president’s ham-fisted approach to gas prices, only led to higher energy prices. And that was the point—the Democratic agenda includes driving up energy prices to force Americans into electric vehicles and into the kind of low-carbon lifestyle they never seem to adopt themselves.”
For more on gas prices, click here.
Shutdown Showdown
What to know: Even the Washington Post acknowledges that the Democrats lost the government shutdown.
The TPPF take: Nobody ever really understood what the Democrats were trying to prove.
“Using their own eyes, Americans could see despite the barrage of biased media coverage that the military weren’t being paid, until Trump paid them,” says TPPF’s Sherry Sylvester. “The Democrats didn’t care. Then, after thousands of flights were cancelled because air traffic controllers weren’t being paid, Democrats still didn’t care. They didn’t even care when poor people lost their SNAP benefits. After almost six weeks of shutdown, at a cost estimate of anywhere between $7 billion and $15 billion a week, eight Democrat senators heard them and broke the logjam.”
For more on the shutdown, click here.